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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   2566 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 7, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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For the frequent posters/bloggers here - what is your relationship with writing? I was reading Freddie DeBoer's fifteen years of writing where he reflects on his journey, and lord it is dark! I have aspirations of becoming at least a part-time blogger, and I do have a small blog, but don't work on it often.

I suppose my question is, do most people hate writing like Freddie after a while, or is he just uniquely crazy? I know there's a trope of mentally disturbed writers....

I spent >10 Novembers of my life doing NaNoWriMo. https://nanowrimo.org/

I started when I was much too young to have the discipline or, indeed, ability, to actually carry it through. But I was very determined, and kept it at year on year. Finally I did crack the 50k mark. After doing that twice, I now feel that I've gotten all I can out of NaNoWriMo, and I don't do it any more. (Semi-related: I also was the city organizer for this in my city in 2019. November 2019 was one of the better months of my life.)

From when I was a teenager, it was always my goal to get something actually published. I achieved this in late 2022 by having a non-fiction essay published in an anthology about my city. It's a real book, published by a real publisher. You can get it at Barnes & Noble, and the library has 20+ copies of it, and my name is in there. I was paid exactly $20.00 for it; I put the check in a little frame, which sits in my office on a bookcase now. I would like to publish a novel some day, but having now ticked the "get published" box, this isn't something that keeps up at night anymore.

With regards to the act of writing: there are long periods of pain, and relatively short periods where it feels amazing. For me - and note that I primarily write fiction - the really difficult part is going from the state of "I have no active project going" to "I have a project and I'm well into it." I go on all kinds of false starts and dead-end paths, and it's quite discouraging. Furthermore, as I've gotten older and reached a rather stable mid-career professional phase, I actually find myself a bit starved for ideas sometimes. This would have been unimaginable in my 20s. However, when I actually managed to get the ball rolling, there are few feelings to compare with finishing a passage after which you can think, "That says what I meant it to say. I've conveyed this perfectly." It's a lot like playing golf: you put up with all the shanks and hooks because of the occasional perfect strike.

As I once said to a writing buddy of mine: I've gone through periods where I've tried to stop. I recognize that there are other hobbies I can pursue which don't come with any frustration. There are things that I am better at, than at writing. I'm probably more talented at tennis; if I put as much time into tennis as I do writing, I could be winning the local wee amateur tournaments and things. But I always come back to it. I seem to have wired my brain into that mold over many years, and now I just feel bad about myself if I don't log a few hours at the desk every couple of days.

I'm not a prolific writer, but I used to keep a blog, every couple of days, for probably eight years. Under my real name, because it had started as an assignment in college, and just kept going. One day, someone I was working for brought up the blog as a problem, as proof that I was an insufficiently cheerful person for the position I was in, as a a prelude to forcing me to leave what I had been doing. I never blogged publicly again.

The only pre-blog writer I can think of who would have flourished at it is GK Chesterton.

In general, it seems almost impossible to continue putting out high quality writing at a typical blogger pace over long time periods. I used to read Rod Dreher's blog, but he puts out negative content like mad -- three or four articles about something that upsets him a day, sometimes! There's no way that's healthy. There's a religious blog I quite enjoy (Fr. Stephen Freeman), and it's been going along nicely for quite some time now, and he seems to be doing fine with it. I suspect Orthodox priests have a better support network and feedback for what they're saying than bloggers, and his blog posts are an extension of his in-person talks and sermons.

Personally, I would like to write again when the children are a bit older, but perhaps for a small group of people I know a bit about. Blogging was the best when I would get comments from a handful of people I could either talk with in person, or whose blogs I also read. Or perhaps even letters. Not even emails, but physical letters. Maybe I want a penpal or something, and also send original watercolors.

In my experience (reading guides to writing by successful authors, or listening to interviews on the subject) there are two types of professional writer out there: those who hate writing, and those for whom writing is as easy as breathing.

The first type (the Haters) are people like Freddie DeBoer, Larry Correia, or Roald Dahl. They are more likely to look at writing as a job like any other: it's hard, and it takes commitment and work and discipline if you're going to have any chance of being successful. Dahl would write about how writing was exhausting:

The life of a writer is absolute hell compared with the life of a businessman. The writer has to force himself to work. He has to make his own hours and if he doesn’t go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him. If he is a writer of fiction he lives in a world of fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not. Two hours of writing fiction leaves this particular writer absolutely drained. For those two hours he has been miles away, he has been somewhere else, in a different place with totally different people, and the effort of swimming back into normal surroundings is very great. It is almost a shock. The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it. It happens to be a fact that nearly every writer of fiction in the world drinks more whisky than is good for him. He does it to give himself faith, hope and courage. A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.

I am in this camp myself: writing is hard to do. I'd rather be doing other things. When it comes time to write, (proper writing, not shooting off a comment on The Motte) I find just about anything else more attractive, like doing the dishes or weeding or finally cleaning out those gutters. For these writers the difficulty of writing is something that must be overcome.

Then there is the second camp (the Breathers) who have no idea why the first type are writers to begin with. This camp includes C. S. Lewis, Andrew Klavan, Scott Alexander, and Isaac Asimov. These are the type of people who, when asked how a young writer can start writing, would reply in either frustration or confusion that if they're not writing already then they're not really writers. Writers write, it's what they do, and it's easy. They couldn't not write if they wanted to. Lewis would hardly ever edit his books, getting them just the way he liked them on the first try. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers on earth, writing over 500 books and scads of short stories, essays, articles, etc. As for Scott:

On the other hand, I know people who want to get good at writing, and make a mighty resolution to write two hundred words a day every day, and then after the first week they find it’s too annoying and give up. These people think I’m amazing, and why shouldn’t they? I’ve written a few hundred to a few thousand words pretty much every day for the past ten years.

But as I’ve said before, this has taken exactly zero willpower. It’s more that I can’t stop even if I want to. Part of that is probably that when I write, I feel really good about having expressed exactly what it was I meant to say. Lots of people read it, they comment, they praise me, I feel good, I’m encouraged to keep writing, and it’s exactly the same virtuous cycle as my brother got from his piano practice.

That's just how it is. I would say the Haters become professional writers because they have ideas they want to share and stories they want to tell and writing, while difficult, is the best way they can express those things. The Breathers become writers because that's just what they are. If they weren't publishing books, they'd be one of those guys who constantly edits Wikipedia.

Funnily enough, I think deBoer would actually identify as a breather, considering he recently published an entire post about how much he hates the "ugh I'm a writer and I hate writing" thing: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/if-you-dont-like-writing-do-something

I would say that being a significantly above average writer comes to me with minimal effort.

I would also say that becoming the kind of writer I respect a great deal would take serious effort, to the point where if I was writing solely as a hobby, it would become a net negative in terms of enjoyment.

Wow, you're making me real jealous of the Breathers right now. This is a bit depressing as someone who has aspirations of becoming a professional writer, hah.

I think realistically I want to write because yes I have ideas I want to share, but it also seems like one of the few careers I could tolerate long term. Perhaps I need to explore more.

If you're not a Breather, then you'll just need to treat it like a job. As far as jobs go, writing isn't that bad! Beats digging ditches or working retail. You'll just need to go in with that expectation and use some discipline.

Very true. I also love reading, learning, doing research, and feel I have interesting takes. Besides, I enjoy the creative parts of writing, and when I get into the flow of it, it works well.

I'd say the issue is more that I've had creativity and doing work I enjoy like writing beaten out of me because I have so many other demands in my life to juggle. Writing is one of those things I love to do when I have the time and energy, but I very rarely do nowadays. An interesting conundrum.

Do you write anything outside of Motte posts?

I've written a few short stories and I used to have a blog, but over the last few years the only writing I do is commenting like this. I have some hope of doing some more substantial writing when my kids are older, but I don't plan on writing professionally.

Hasn’t Freddie had a lot of other mental-health issues over that time period?

Bipolar probably doesn’t help with the darkness.

He has, yeah. Sounds like he's been a total asshole to a lot of folks in the industry. Luckily I don't have the same problems with mental illness, even though he has clearly been a dick I feel for him.

I enjoy writing, as I'm sure most of the regulars who don't lurk do. There is a pleasure to be had in a good argument well presented, with just the right amount of wit.

I also enjoy writing fiction, as should be evident from my current novel being 84k words in at this point.

I've never really had the urge to write a blog per se, because I hold myself up to the stratospherically high standards that Scott and others embody, and in addition I don't think I have the patience or conscientiousness to really dig into textual sources or engage in the kind of scholarship that raises his writing from merely enjoyable to read to outright enlightening.

Of course, writing so much fiction has clearly revealed technical deficiencies, the kind that aren't obviated by mere talent. I struggle to write characters that aren't partially self-inserted, or the patience to write long outlines and plot out story threads.

You can get surprisingly far just writing without thinking too much ahead, but I did write myself into a corner recently, something I sought to resolve by taking a step back and writing an interlude that fleshes out the MC's backstory and motivations. I hope that unsticks me and gets the creative juices flowing, but I suspect that to truly elevate my writing to the level of the authors I personally respect, I'd have to put in the hours and attempt to develop a technical understanding of plots, stakes-building, and writing characters with mindsets very alien to my own. Not that I can't do that of course, merely not as well as I aspire to.

But most often, you'll see me writing because I'm bored and have nothing better to do haha

Surely most people who hate writing solve this problem by not doing it? The average pay is low and the variance is high. That variance might be a bit of a trap, for people who are lucky enough to get a wide audience quickly and only later discover that their muse is ready for them to quit but their bank account is not. But I'd expect that to be the exception, not the rule.

If you actually look for people who write prolifically without being paid for it, like frequent posters here, surely the selection bias is going to pick out people who love it. Even among paid prolific authors there's that bias. Asimov's attitude was roughly: "I never take vacations voluntarily, and I bring pen and paper so I can enjoy the ones I'm dragged along on". I loved his response to one incredulous interviewer, who asked something like: "But what if you found out you only had 6 months to live? What would you do then?" "Type faster."

Hah, well I like writing well enough now but I'm considering trying to make money on it. I'm definitely not on Asimov's level.

I imagine I'd hate writing (well, 'journalism/opinion writing') if I had to do it for a living. The pressure of a deadline creeping up on you, no ideas because you just don't feel creative this week, or maybe you don't know how to entertain your audience and can watch it slowly drifting off or losing interest? That's tough. Writing here is fun because you don't have to do it, some weeks I enjoy just reading what other people have written.

That's a fair point. Writing seems like an attractive career because I enjoy it, but the common wisdom is that if you try to commercialize a hobby you quickly lose the enjoyment. Definitely something to think about.

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